Charles Todd - Wings of Fire

Nodding, she said, “Aye, well, the family was well thought of. I’m sure everything that could be done was. It was a shock to me, I can tell you! Walking into that house on my day off, and not finding Mr. Nicholas about-but sometimes Miss Olivia had a bad night, and he’d sit with her until the worst passed. After Miss Rosamund died, Mrs. FitzHugh she was then, and the staff was reduced, he was the one Dr. Penrith showed how to rub Miss Olivia’s limbs and her back, to help the pain. Well, there was no entertaining, only the family coming there from time to time, and a full staff was wasteful! But to end their lives like that… I can’t say how long it took me to get over my grief. I felt-I felt I should have been there, somehow.” She brought him milk and the small bowl of sugar, then the cakes.

“That you could have prevented it? That you’d have guessed what was in their minds?”

“There was no warning, sir, none, just life going on in its ordinary way!” she told him earnestly. “But I thought if I hadn’t been in such a hurry on the Saturday to leave, to run some errands I’d put off, I might have noticed some little difference, and Mr. Smedley could have come out to the Hall and spoken with them. Restored the balance of their minds!” There was pain in her voice, a heavy sense of guilt as she quoted unconsciously from the inquest verdict.

Suicide was still viewed as a crime against God. Mrs. Tre-pol sincerely felt a responsibility to save her employers’ souls if she could-as well as their earthly lives. Not out of zeal-ousness but from affection. She cared deeply.

“But if you didn’t notice anything-if their behavior was normal-then whatever caused them to take their lives must have occurred after you left.”

“What could have happened? There were no visitors expected that I knew of, and the post had come already, I’d have heard if it brought bad news. And look back on the day as I will, there was nothing that changed in that house! Nothing to cause such anguish that they’d want to die!”

“People don’t kill themselves without a reason,” he said, preparing to ask the question he knew very well would hurt her more. “Unless you think that Miss Marlowe was in such terrible pain that Mr. Cheney gave her too much laudanum, saw what he’d done, and then killed himself in grief.”

She put her own cup down and stared at him. “Mr. Nicholas would never have done such a terrible thing as give her too much! Oh, no, sir, he was not the kind of man to make a mistake like that!”

Without answering her directly, he shifted tactics. “There has been a good deal of sadness in the Hall. Two children dying young. Miss Rosamund losing her husbands before their time. Then Mr. Cheney and Miss Marlowe. And finally, Stephen FitzHugh.”

“As to that, sir, we all have our crosses to bear,” she said stiffly.

“But sometimes there’s a history of violence in a family. And sometimes one person is at the root of it.”

“And who do you think stands at the root of this family’s tragedies, sir?” she asked, bristling. “Mr. Cormac, who lives in London? Or Miss Susannah, who’s the last of the Treve-lyans? They’re all that’s left to do anybody a harm!”

“Miss Marlowe was an unusual woman. She wrote poetry of a kind that few men can produce. Where did she learn so much of life?”

“I never asked her, sir! Come to that, I never knew until she’d died that she was a writer of poems or anything else. Mr. Nicholas must have known, he sat working on his ships in her study, or went to find books she wanted in the library, or talked to her long hours of the day and night. I’d hear their voices, quiet and steady, as I moved about doing my cleaning. I think she’d have told him, she told him most everything important to her.”

“Except the name of the man she was in love with?”

Her mouth fell open. “And who was that likely to be, I ask you! She never had suitors coming to the Hall, and she went out so little. No man was likely to stumble over her in Plymouth or London and sweep her off her feet! Mr. Nicholas and Mr. Stephen, they were her brothers. And old Wilkins couldn’t light a fire in a grate!”

“Cormac FitzHugh wasn’t her brother. He wasn’t related to her or to her mother. A stepbrother by courtesy alone.”

Mrs. Trepol gave Rutledge an odd look. “What makes you think Miss Marlowe was fond of Mr. Cormac? Or he of her?”

“Because she wrote of love in one of her books of poetry, and no woman-no man for that matter-could have written of love with such emotion if he or she had no knowledge of it.”

Mrs. Trepol laughed. “Oh, there was love enough in that house to write a dozen books of poetry! Miss Rosamund loved her husbands and her children and her father with a deep and abiding feeling. Just living there, as I did as a young housemaid, you could wrap yourself in it. And Miss Olivia, she was very fond of Mr. Stephen; he could brighten her day just like his mother did. Mr. Nicholas used to tease her that she’d spoil him-Mr. Stephen-and Miss Olivia would say, ‘He was born to spoil and love. Some people are.’ “

Which told Rutledge that Mrs. Trepol had never read the Wings of Fire poems…

“Mr. Cormac FitzHugh used to live in the household. Miss Marlowe might have loved him once.”

“But he never loved her, sir! I’d swear to that on a Bible, if I had to. He was close to her, in an odd way, Mr. Cormac was, like he knew her better even than Mr. Nicholas did. But it wasn’t love between them. At least not on his part.”

Because Cormac FitzHugh had recognized Olivia Marlowe for what she was, a murderer?

“Do you think that Miss Marlowe was capable of killing anyone? Besides herself?”

“Killing anyone? Miss Marlowe? I’d sooner believe my own husband, God rest his soul, could do such a thing! Whatever put such a nasty idea into your head? Not anyone in Borcombe, I’d trust my life to that!” The indignation in her voice was very real.

“And you’d be willing to swear, in a court of law, that no one in the Hall-none of Miss Rosamund’s family-was capable of murder?”

She regarded him severely. “I don’t know what they are getting up to in London,” she said tersely, “to send you down here with such questions as that to ask decent, law-abiding folk, but I’ll tell you straight out, that if there was murder done in the Hall on the night that Miss Olivia and Mr. Nicholas died, it was a cruel and godless person that did it and he’s nobody we’ve ever seen in Borcombe or want to see. Now if there’re no more you want to ask me, I’ve plants in my garden that still need to be watered!”

Back in his room at The Three Bells, Rutledge sat in the chair by the window with the books of O. A. Manning’s poetry in front of him. But looking at the slim volumes, he found himself thinking instead about the poet. About the woman who had found such resources of understanding within her. And yet who had killed herself because her strength somehow came to an end.

Could a man or woman be so deeply aware of the mysteries of the human soul and yet be capable of such terrible crimes as the murder of children? Could she live with that knowledge of herself, and still create such beauty? Was that, finally, why she had killed herself? Assuming that Cormac FitzHugh had told Rutledge the truth…

How did you write poetry? How many words did you put on paper, and how often did you throw them away because they didn’t say what you heard in your spirit? How many poems went wrong, how many lines were flat and soulless, how many were trite and tired and empty? How many pages were crumpled up and tossed aside before a few unexpected words sang in your head, while you responded with blood and bone? How easy had it been-or how painfully arduous? How tiring or overwhelming?